Telephone privileges for the Bureau of Prisons (BOP)
approximately 113,000 federal inmates have increased dramatically since the 1970s, when
inmates were permitted one phone call every three months and the call was placed by BOP
staff. Today, most inmates in the federal prison system are free to make as many telephone
calls as they are able to pay for or as many collect calls as people outside prison will
accept. Even though all inmate calls are recorded, except prearranged calls between
inmates and their attorneys, the BOP listens to less than four percent of calls,1 citing the lack of staff to monitor more calls. Consequently,
prison officials have little control over inmate calls or any criminal activities
discussed during those calls.

This special review conducted by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) seeks to
identify the extent of telephone abuse by BOP inmates, assess the BOPs response to
the problem, and offer recommendations to address this serious issue. Our review found
that a significant number of federal inmates use prison telephones to commit serious
crimes while incarcerated  including murder, drug trafficking, and fraud. We
conclude that despite BOP managements awareness of this problem, it has taken
insufficient steps to address it.

The BOP provides inmates access to telephones on the grounds that it furthers important
correctional objectives, such as maintaining an inmates ties to his family. However,
BOPs responsibilities extend beyond those objectives, and the virtually unlimited
telephone access comes at the cost of allowing inmates the ability to commit serious
criminal activity using prison telephones. Often those crimes extend beyond the prison. We
believe that the BOP needs to squarely address what appears to be widespread inmate abuse
of prison telephones and take immediate and meaningful actions to correct this problem.

We found that the limited action the BOP has taken in recent years to address this
problem came only after the extensive publicity given to cases involving inmates using
prison telephones to run large-scale drug organizations. The most notorious recent case of
inmate telephone abuse involved Rayful Edmond III, a convicted drug dealer from
Washington, D.C., who used contacts he made with Colombian drug dealers while serving two
life sentences in the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to expand his
drug trafficking operation while in prison. Federal prosecutors initially referred
evidence of Edmonds use of prison telephones to commit additional crimes to the BOP
to handle as an administrative matter. However, BOP officials took no action to limit
Edmond's use of prison telephones. Prosecutors eventually gathered enough evidence to
charge Edmond with additional drug trafficking crimes. As a result, Edmond agreed to
cooperate with the government in developing criminal cases against four other inmates who
were using BOP telephones to operate large drug trafficking organizations outside prison.
In 1996, Edmond pleaded guilty to drug charges stemming from his use of prison telephones
and received an additional 30-year sentence. In an interview with the OIG, Edmond said he
had spent several hours every day on the telephone, occasionally using two lines
simultaneously to conduct his drug business.

After a 1996 BOP review of inmate telephone abuse in the aftermath of the Edmond case,
the BOP approved only one significant change in its telephone policy  an increase in
the severity of the sanction for inmate telephone abuse. This revision has yet to take
effect because the rule-making process required to enact the new policy is still ongoing.

The Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General also have expressed an interest in
this issue and have pressed the BOP to pursue administrative, legislative, and
technological avenues to ameliorate the problem. Our review shows that for a variety of
reasons  a lack of resources, the press of other issues, the belief that a
settlement with inmates in a class action lawsuit about inmate access to telephones
imposes restrictions in this area  the BOPs limited corrective efforts have
been insufficient to address this serious issue.

Several BOP officials with whom we spoke also have expressed the belief that a new
generation of telephone equipment planned for installation in all BOP institutions during
the next two years will prevent many cases of inmate telephone abuse. As will be discussed
below, however, BOP's postponement of needed reforms until this new telephone system is
operational is not justified. No new technology on the horizon  including the
BOPs new inmate telephone system  will solve the problem of inmate telephone
abuse without aggressive intervention by BOP officials. As we describe below, we believe
that unless the BOP places meaningful restrictions on inmate telephone privileges, steps
up its monitoring of selected inmate calls, and consistently disciplines telephone
abusers, no significant change in the level and seriousness of inmate telephone abuse will
occur.2

At the outset of our review, we attempted
to determine the scope of the problem of inmate abuse of prison telephones. However, we
found that the BOP had a paucity of information on this issue. Neither BOP headquarters in
Washington, D.C., nor BOP facilities keeps statistics of cases in which inmates are
accused of committing crimes from prison using the telephone. Although the BOP maintains
statistics on violations of prison regulations, this data does not identify which cases
involved the use of telephones. For example, statistics may exist reflecting cases
involving an inmates introduction of contraband into an institution, but the
BOPs records would not reflect whether the introduction of drugs was arranged
through the inmates use of the telephone. Moreover, several BOP officials
acknowledged to us that their statistics do not represent the overall number of telephone
violations because many violations are informally resolved or are dismissed when
prosecutors pursue criminal charges arising out of the same events.

Initially, we attempted to independently identify the scope of the problem through a
survey questionnaire we sent to various Department of Justice offices. We sent the
questionnaire to all 94 United States Attorneys Offices, asking them to identify any
cases they prosecuted involving crimes committed by inmates using telephones in federal
facilities. We sent a similar questionnaire to FBI and DEA headquarters, which distributed
it to all FBI and DEA field offices. This questionnaire asked all offices to identify
investigations they conducted involving a federal inmates use of prison telephones
to commit crimes. In response to our request, we received information from 72 U.S.
Attorneys Offices, 16 FBI field offices, and 11 DEA field offices. But because these
offices do not index cases according to whether they took place in prison or involved the
use of telephones, their responses to our questionnaire were based on the memories of the
people who answered it rather than a comprehensive statistical analysis.

We also sent a questionnaire to all 66 BOP facilities that use the Inmate Telephone
System (ITS), a telephone system that can store and analyze sophisticated data about
inmate telephone calls better than the older telephone system used in 27 other BOP
facilities. The questionnaire asked each facility to provide data on the total number of
calls made by inmates on three separate dates we randomly selected; the number of inmates
making more than 25 calls on those dates; the number of telephone numbers dialed over 10
times on those dates; the number of BOP staff monitoring calls on those dates; the number
of calls monitored by BOP staff as they took place on those dates; and the number of
previously recorded calls listened to by BOP staff on those dates. The questionnaire also
asked for information about each facilitys policies regarding the hours of and
methods of monitoring inmate calls.

In addition, we visited nine BOP facilities to interview the staff responsible for the
institutions security and inmate telephone monitoring operations, and also to
familiarize ourselves with various relevant aspects of the federal correctional system,
field staff operations, and the telephone equipment used in the facilities. The facilities
we visited were:

We selected these facilities in order to collect information from several different
types of BOP institutions, including institutions with different security levels and
different physical layouts, two factors that affect the methods of monitoring prison
telephones. We visited four penitentiaries, three of which have remote monitoring
locations in use and utilize correctional officers to monitor calls; three medium security
facilities; and two low security institutions.

To obtain further insight on inmates use of telephones, we interviewed Rayful
Edmond about his experience using prison telephones to commit crimes and his impressions
about the extent of inmate telephone abuse. We also reviewed the BOP case files from four
inmates whose convictions received significant public attention and who appeared to have
the resources to continue criminal activities while incarcerated. We examined these files
to determine what steps, if any, the BOP took to prevent these inmates from using the
telephones to continue their criminal activities while in BOP custody. In addition, we
examined three high-profile prosecutions of prisoners who were convicted of conducting
their crimes from inside a BOP facility  the prosecution of Edmond and his
co-conspirators; the prosecution of drug dealer and convicted murderer Anthony Jones of
Baltimore, Maryland; and the prosecution of alleged mob figure Oreste Abbamonte. Each used
prison telephones to commit his crimes while incarcerated. We examined these cases to
determine how the BOP responded to each case and what, if anything, could have been done
differently to detect or deter this criminal activity.

As part of our review, we interviewed numerous BOP officials about the scope of the
problem of inmate telephone abuse, reviewed the BOP's current policies regarding this
issue, and assessed BOP efforts to address the problem. Among the BOP Headquarters
officials we interviewed were the Assistant Director for Correctional Programs; the Deputy
Assistant Director for Correctional Programs; the Chief and former Chief of the
Intelligence Section; the Director of the Program Review Division; the Assistant Director
for Administration; the Chief of the Trust Fund Branch; the Chief of the Inmate Telephone
Section; and the Deputy and Associate Deputy General Counsel. In addition, we interviewed
nine BOP wardens and members of their staff during our site visits. All told, we
interviewed more than 70 BOP employees and about 20 other persons in the Department of
Justice during our review. We examined numerous documents, including BOP program
statements on the issue of telephones and case law on inmate rights to telephone access.
We also reviewed the litigation and the settlement in a large class action lawsuit brought
by inmates against the BOP regarding the telephone system.

What we found from these interviews, case examinations, data collection, and document
review paints a troubling picture of the scope and seriousness of inmate use of prison
telephones to commit criminal activity. In sum, we found that the current monitoring
system for inmate call is virtually useless because only three and a half percent of the
thousands of calls made daily from each BOP facility are monitored. In addition, prison
staff who monitor inmate calls are often untrained and frequently rotated to other
assignments at the facility. Consequently, few serious incidents are discovered through
BOPs telephone monitoring.

This report describes the results of our review and is organized into nine chapters and
five appendices. In Chapter Two, we provide an overview of the BOP and discuss the history
of BOP inmates access to prison telephones. We also describe the current inmate
telephone system, state prison practices regarding telephone use, and the role of the BOP
staff in monitoring telephone use in federal institutions. Chapter Three describes the
legal and regulatory background to inmate telephone use. Chapter Four assesses the data
and information the OIG collected from its surveys and interviews of staff from United
States Attorneys Offices, the DEA, and the FBI. Chapter Five reviews the case
histories of several inmates who conducted serious criminal activity from federal prison,
including Rayful Edmond, and our review of the telephone use of four inmates whose crimes
received substantial public attention. Chapter Six describes a variety of BOP initiatives
over the years to address inmate telephone abuse. Chapter Seven analyzes potential
technological and administrative solutions to the problem of inmate telephone abuse.
Chapter Eight offers our recommendations, and Chapter Nine describes our conclusions.

1 Our survey of all institutions using
the BOP Inmate Telephone System found that the BOP monitors approximately 2.9% of live
calls by inmates. We also found that the BOP reviews an additional .7% of calls after they
have been recorded. These numbers are based on estimates provided by those responsible for
monitoring at each institution, and not on monitoring statistics. Such statistics are not
maintained by the BOP.

2 In comments submitted to the OIG, the BOP argued
that the magnitude of this problem is exaggerated and the scope and effectiveness of the
changes that the BOP has implemented to address the problem are underrated. As described
throughout this report, we disagree with these arguments.